With crops now saved and harvest complete, the attention of tillage farmers turns to price and planting. Untypically, international prices have been climbing since early August and there is currently a stronger feel to the market.

While buyers have not yet announced prices for 2020, the feeling is that they may be at last year’s level of around €150/t for green barley, or perhaps slightly stronger if markets continue to rise.

While wheat is scarce in Europe, there is a worry in the market that it could easily price itself out of feed markets unless the international maize harvest is poorer than expected.

Planting

Meanwhile, the major focus on tillage farms is also turning to winter planting.

There is concern that the prolonged harvest and the broken weather may have affected seed supply, with an amount of rejection occurring on top of a lower planted area.

However, the current expectation from some members of the seed trade is that there will be adequate certified seed available for normal planted areas of wheat and barley, despite harvest rejections. There is also concern that some of the crops that were accepted may subsequently not pass some of the certification requirements.

Based on current expectations, it is likely that there would be surplus seed availability for the normal 60,000ha of winter wheat and adequate seed for a normal winter barley area, but not sufficient to repeat the high autumn 2018 plantings.

In both instances, some of the seed supply would be carryover from last year, which could not be planted. This should not be a concern for growers as it is all retested to ensure satisfactory performance.

There may be greater need for concern about some of the 2020 harvested seed as a result of the poor weather during harvest.

Seed availability for spring barley is likely to be much tighter, however, making high winter plantings important this autumn to take the pressure off seed availability for spring planting.

Meanwhile, the harvest is now just about wrapped up, except for some remaining spring beans, with the majority of straw gathered also. The delay in getting fields cleared will hinder the benefit of catch crops and decrease the option to stubble cultivate successfully.